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Chapter 21: To Know Oneself and to Be Oneself

Whatever Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and other people like him are doing is good, but they are calling something meditation which is not. That’s where they are leading people astray. If they had remained sincere and authentic and told people that this will give you mental health, physical health, a more relaxed life, a more peaceful existence, it was right. But once they started calling it transcendental meditation they have raised a very trivial thing to an ultimate significance which it cannot fulfill. People have been in transcendental meditation for years, and in the East, for thousands of years. But that has not become their self-knowing, and that has not made them Gautam Buddhas.

If you want to understand exactly what meditation is Gautam Buddha is the first man to come to its right, exact definition - that is witnessing. Learn from Gautam Buddha witnessing, and learn from Patanjali the discipline that can be helpful for meditation. This way, yoga and mediation can become a synthesis. Yoga is a discipline, just an outer support - immensely helpful but not absolutely needed. And Gautam Buddha has given to the world the very fundamental and the most essential thing: witnessing as meditation.

Your question will not be solved until you start on the path a little bit; otherwise, you will ask again, “What is meditation?” Just my explaining it to you is not enough; you will have to move on the path.

Hymie and Becky Goldberg are about to take their first flight on an airliner. Hymie spends a while enjoying his comfortable, reclining seat and watching the pretty stewardess walking up and down the aisle. Next he looks out of the window and says excitedly, “Becky, look at those people down there, they look like ants.”

Becky leans over, has a look and then says, “They are ants, you idiot.we haven’t left the ground yet!”

Hymie Goldberg was so interested in watching the pretty girls going up and down the aisle, he had completely forgotten that the airplane was still standing - it had not moved! So looking at the ants, he thought they must be people from such a height.

That’s why you meditate with closed eyes!

Osho,How you talk about the same old things day after day and yet produce a new revelation with each sentence is to me the greatest miracle in existence. Would you care to comment, please?

It is very simple. First, because I have nothing to say, so I am free to say anything. I don’t know what is going to be my next sentence; hence, it is not a burden or a trouble; it is spontaneous. I am not an orator who has to practice and rehearse. I love people, and I love to share my experience with them. I don’t remember the past; hence, it is very difficult for me to repeat it. And because I look more at the questioner than his question.and all questioners are different; their questions may be almost the same. Looking at the questioner, my answer changes, I respond to the person. I don’t have any doctrine to preach, so I don’t have to be consistent. I enjoy absolute freedom.